Episode 1: Why Your Body Isn't Betraying You After Breast Cancer. It's Protecting You.

Katherine Froggatt (00:00)

I want to start today not with my credentials, not with a list of what this podcast covers. I want to start with a knife dropping onto a cafe floor in Taupo, New Zealand. Because that is where this really begins. And if you have been diagnosed with breast cancer, I think you will understand why the moment I describe it.

Now let me tell you my story, the real one, because I think it might sound a little like yours.

By the time this episode ends, I want something to shift for you. Not a big dramatic transformation, just one thing. I want you to try on a different idea about what is happening inside you. Because if you have been living with the belief that you should be coping better than you are, that the fear means that something is wrong with you, that the exhaustion means you are weak.

That the grief of not feeling like yourself anymore is somehow your fault. I want to offer you a different frame. What if none of this is evidence of being broken? What if all of it is evidence that you are a human being responding intelligently to something enormous? That reframe from broken to dysregulated.

is where change starts to happen. And today that is where we begin.

It was december twenty fifteen. I was having lunch with my family at a cafe in Taupo, New Zealand. I had just finished breastfeeding Charlotte, my youngest, who was two at the time, and as I reached for my knife to have my lunch, I felt a sharp pain in my right breast that made me drop it just like that. Paul

my husband,

looked at me, with this worried expression and thought.

I brushed it off. I told him it was nothing. But somehow inside me, something had shifted. I managed to get an appointment with a locum doctor two weeks later, who told me it was probably a cyst. And just in case she referred me for a scan first week back in January 2016. I went alone. I genuinely thought

I would be in and out in ten minutes. I was not prepared for what happened in that room. Four scans on my lactating breasts, both left and right, each one more painful than the last. And then I caught the expression on the radiologist's face. That look. If you had been in that situation, you know the one I mean. She said she needed a second opinion.

And left me alone in the room. And in that silence, my whole body understood something. My mind was not yet ready to accept nor comprehend. I was booked for a biopsy the next morning. I spend a night lying awake, running every possible outcome through my mind. It's a cyst, it has to be a cyst. Cancer doesn't happen.

To people like me, my life is perfect. I am perfect. That word perfect. I had used it like armor for years, and that night I felt like it was starting to crack. The shame that arrived there alongside the fear was something I was not expecting. Sitting in that waiting room the next morning,

I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with my body. I felt like I had failed somehow, like everyone in that room could see it. That shame feels important to name because I know I am not the only one who felt it. A cancer diagnosis can arrive with this completely irrational but very real sense that you did something wrong.

That you were not careful enough or not healthy enough or not enough. I want you to know that is not the truth. That is fear. And fear in that moment will say almost everything. Anything. Notice that. Notice it. Let it be there. You don't have to argue with it or wrestle with it.

You don't have to fix it, you just have to know it is not the whole story.

So here is what I understand right now that I did not understand then. What I experienced in that scan room, in that waiting room, and in the moments that followed was my nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. When we perceive a threat, the body activates cortisol and it rises in my body, the breathing shallows.

My mind starts racing and maybe heart palpitation kicks in. And my mind starts scanning for danger constantly. This is the survival response. It is ancient, it is not a malfunction. The problem is when that alarm stays switched on long after the acute threat has passed. When treatment ends and the world expects you to feel

Relieved, but your body is still bracing, still vigilant, still waiting for the next threat.

This is called dysregulation. It's not brokenness, dysregulation. And that distinction is not just semantic. It changes everything about how you approach healing. Because dysregulation is something you can actually work with. Your nervous system learned that the world was dangerous. It can learn something different as well.

I had a full mastectomy. And when it was over, when the surgery was done and I was recovering, people kept telling me how well I looked. Katherine, you look fantastic. You're so strong, Katherine. I don't know what I'll do if I were you. Or you're going to be fine, Katherine. And I would smile because I did not know how to really explain or respond what

Is it actually happening inside? I looked in the mirror one morning and I did not recognize the woman looking back at me. Not because of the physical changes, though those were significant because my full mastectomy included the loss of my right nipple. But because something inside me that I could not name was gone. The version of myself was

I had always been, had been built on control, on performance, on being the capable one. And now I was standing in a bathroom with a body I did not trust, a future I could not predict, and an identity that no longer existed. Dr. Modi, my surgeon, who was brilliant by the way, had told me early on, Katherine.

Your life will never be the same. I hated hearing that. I wrestled with that thought for a long, long time. And I hated that he was right. I became bitterly aware that if I kept doing life the same way, driven by perfectionism, in conflict with my new body, refusing to grieve what I had lost.

I was not giving myself a real chance. The disease had changed my body. But it was also asking me to change how I lived inside it. I did not know how to do that yet. And I wanted to say something to you here, my friend. If you are in that space right now.

If you don't know how to do it either, that is okay. You don't need to have this all figured out today. You just need to be willing to stay curious about what is possible. That willingness is enough to start with.

One spring afternoon across from where we lived, I took the children to a park. Ethan was five, Charlotte was three. I sat on the new spring grass and I watched them play on the slides, and Ethan was teasing Charlotte with hide and seek around the sailboat frame in the in the playground. And Charlotte's laughter, this completely contagious laughter.

Full body laughter carried across the whole park. I closed my eyes and I felt the sun on my face. I ran my fingers through my hair, this short pixie hair that was finally growing back, and I felt something ignite inside me. Just a little flicker, but it was there. I opened my eyes and

I watched them and I thought to myself, I grew these two awesome, beautiful humans. My body did not fail me. It made them. I made them. And in that moment something became very clear. I could not control whether the cancer came back, but I could choose to be present.

For every single day that I had with these beautiful children, I could choose to stop fighting my body and start learning how to work with it. That was the beginning. Not of recovery exactly, of something more important than recovery, of deciding that my life, this new imperfect, unrecognizable life.

Was worth showing up for.

I share all of that, my friend, not because my story is unique, but because I suspect parts of it sound familiar to you. The fear that arrived before you were ready for it, the shame that nobody warned you about, the strange grief of not recognizing yourself anymore, the moment if you have had it yet, when something quietly shifts. Here is what I want you to take from today.

You are not broken. You are responding to something bloody enormous. Your nervous system is not working against you. It is working overtime to protect you. And the fact that you are here, listening to this means you are already looking for a way through. And that matters more than you know. In the episodes ahead, we go into all of it.

Your nervous system, your metabolism, your fear, what your body is holding, and what resilient remission actually looks and feels like one honest conversation at a time.

If today's episode resonated, if something I've said and shared in my story landed for you, the best next step is simple. Take the free breastwise resilient remission assessment. It takes only two minutes. It will show you exactly where you are right now and what to focus on first. The link is in the show notes. And if you have any questions, bring them to the comments. I

personally read them all. And the questions you ask will help me shape future episodes. So if something came up for you today, I genuinely want you to hear it.

I am so glad you're here, my friend. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a conversation. And if you know a woman who needs to hear this, who is sitting with fear right now, who feels like she should be coping better than she is, share this episode with her. That one small act could change everything for her. Thank you so much for listening and until next time, keep creating impact with ease.

This is breastwise unafraid.